DE BANANA 221 



ideal, as practice often will differ from theory ; for it has 

 been so long cultivated and selected by man being pro- 

 bably one of the very oldest, if not actually quite the oldest, 

 of domesticated plants that it has all but lost the original 

 habit of producing seeds. This is a common effect of 

 cultivation on fruits, and it is of course deliberately aimed 

 at by horticulturists, as the seeds are generally a nuisance, 

 regarded from the point of view of the eater, and their 

 absence improves the fruit, as long as one can manage to 

 get along somehow without them. In the pretty little 

 Tangierine oranges (so ingeniously corrupted by fruiterers 

 into mandarins) the seeds have almost been cultivated 

 out ; in the best pine-apples, and in the small grapes 

 known in the dried state as currants, they have quite dis- 

 appeared ; while in some varieties of pears they survive 

 only in the form of shrivelled, barren, and useless pips. 

 But the banana, more than any other plant we know of, 

 has managed for many centuries to do without seeds alto- 

 gether. The cultivated sort, especially in America, is 

 quite seedless, and the plants are propagated entirely by 

 suckers. 



Still, you can never wholly circumvent nature. Expel 

 her with a pitchfork, tamen usque recurrit. Now nature 

 has settled that the right way to propagate plants is by 

 means of seedlings. Strictly speaking, indeed, it is the 

 only way ; the other modes of growth from bulbs or 

 cuttings are not really propagation, but mere reduplication 

 by splitting, as when you chop a worm in two, and a 

 couple of worms wriggle off contentedly forthwith in 

 either direction. Just so when you divide a plant by 

 cuttings, suckers, slips, or runners ; the two apparent 

 plants thus produced are in the last resort only separate 

 parts of the same individual one and indivisible, like the 

 French Republic. Seedlings are absolutely distinct indi- 



